Multidimensional Data Cubes with EFEU and PostgreSQL

Especially for data warehousing, a relational database is just not enough. Generating multidimensional datacubes can hardly be done by using plain SQL code, and so additional software has to be used to perform all necessary operations. The EFEU package by Erich Fruehstueck is a free alternative to things like OLAP, and can be used in combination with PostgreSQL. This article is derived from the authors' forthcoming book, PostgreSQL Developer's Handbook(Sams, 2001, ISBN: 0672322609).

This chapter is from the book

This chapter is from the book

About EFEU

Back in the 80s and 90s, Erich Fruehstueck started developing an interpreter
language for generating reports automatically. The target was to implement a
model to forecast the demand of flats in Vienna, Austria. He needed a flexible
programming language fast in order to implement the forecast algorithms and the
text generation engine as quickly as possible.

He started implementing a stack-oriented interpreter language, which could
easily be extended using C functions. Later on, the interpreter language
(esh) was changed and it became an object-oriented programming
language. By that time, a lot of functions were added to esh and a lot
of additional software was implemented around the programming language (the
whole package is known as EFEU).

For many years EFEU has been used by an Austrian research company focusing on
the Austrian labor market.